


it's a new world, it's a new start (alive with the beating of young hearts)

by kadaransmuggler



Series: little child of the west winds [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post canon, solas succeeded in tearing down the veil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 13:51:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14833479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadaransmuggler/pseuds/kadaransmuggler
Summary: "She will not see him again for two thousand years. It will take another three for her to love him again."





	it's a new world, it's a new start (alive with the beating of young hearts)

                They stand alone at the end of the world. Vala is crumpled somewhere behind them, and Revas kneels, waiting for the Dread Wolf to kill him. The fight to get here was bitter and bloody. Revas had been the one to strike Vala down, and now, waiting for the same to be done to him, and his only thought is that his sister will finally be free. Solas stares down at him, cold disdain and anger burning in his eyes.

                “What are you waiting for?” Revas asks, his voice rough. For a moment, he really thinks Solas is going to kill him. And then Vala drags herself in front of him, broken and bleeding but still alive. She coughs blood, spits it at Solas’ feet. There are many things she has to hold against him, but the one thing she cannot forgive how he used the Well to control her. To make her fight against her friends. To make her kill them as the world burned around them.

                “No,” she says, and she glares up at him. He has taken everything from her. He will not take her brother, too. He will not, even if it kills her. Something in his face softens then, and he kneels down in front of her.

                “No,” he agrees, and he reaches up to cup her face with his hands. She lets him. Her world has ended, and she can only wish she had gone with it. She should have killed him when she’d had the chance a lifetime ago. Should have plunged a knife into his heart as his magic ate at her arm. Should have, should have, should have. But she had loved him once, and even now she does not know that she could kill him.

                “ _Ir abelas, ma vhenan_ ,” he murmurs. There is something infinitely sad in his voice, in his face, as he presses a kiss to her forehead. She closes her eyes. Like this, she can almost pretend that she is the Inquisitor again and he is just Solas. They are back in Skyhold. They are happy, and she still loves him, and he has not burned her world to ash. Magic washes over her, and she opens her eyes. They are still surrounded by the dead. Her world is gone. She wishes she was too.

                He tucks a piece of her hair behind her ear, and walks away. She crumples, then, her arm curling around her stomach, her breath coming in heaving gasps. She wants to cry, to scream and howl her grief into the sky, but the tears will not come. Instead, she closes her eyes.

                She thinks of Bull, who died first at her hand, when she was a puppet on a string. She thinks of Dorian, who died last, when the Veil fell away and everyone but the elves perished. They had both died screaming. She shivers, and she thinks of Solas.

                She should hate him, but she does not.

                She will not see him again for two thousand years, and she will not love him for another three after that.

* * *

                Her brother leaves too, to join the remnants of the resistance fighters. He tells her it is to help them rebuild. She knows it is because he cannot look at her without seeing his sword through her chest. Vala does the only thing she knows to do:  she finds a hut and she makes it a home.

                It is a sequestered thing, tucked away in the edges of the Arbor Wilds. She has never been good with plants, but she grows her own garden. That is something that still works the same as the old world. Most of it does, really, the only thing that’s changed is the magic. She can feel it pressing against her skin, and now casting comes as easily as breathing. She was a hell of a mage before. She wonders how much devastation she could bring now, and hopes she never has to find out.

                Vala was Dalish before she was the Inquisitor, and falling back to living in the Wilds is easier than she had expected. It is a relief, too, to be away from everyone and everything. The only people that are left are the ancient elvhen, and she thinks she would rather die than walk among them. It is too new, too raw, and grief is still grief even in this strange new world.

                She does not expect the spirits, but she is hardly surprised when they come. The Veil doesn’t exist anymore, and the spirits roam free. She had seen them on the way to her hut. Compassion came first, and brought with it an ache in Vala’s heart. She thinks of Cole, who had shattered with the removal of the Veil. It is not the same, but it is enough like Cole to bring her comfort.

                Wisdom comes next, and teaches her better ways to garden. She wonders if it is the fragments of the Pride demon she’d killed with Solas, and that makes her heart ache too.

                Love comes last, and twists around her ankles like a cat. Love is warm and gentle, and does not hurt. It is Love that encourages her to go to Arlathan. After two thousand years, she finally relents. The loss of her world is not as raw, hurts a little less. She does not feel as though each breath will cleave her into. There is sorrow and there is grief, but instead of wearing it like a noose she wears it like an amulet.

* * *

                The first time she sees him after the end of the world, it is among the crystal spires of Arlathan. He had described them to her before, and shown her once in a dream. But a dream could not compare to the real thing. Her first impression of the city is that is a great beast that has fallen, bones reaching towards the sky. As she gets closer, she sees that they are towers made of white marble instead. The whole city shimmers in the afternoon sun, but it is not so bright it hurts. It is enough to make her breath catch in her throat.

                She wishes her mother was there to see it.

                She finds him by accident, near one of the crystal glass bridges leading to the city. She does not recognize him, either. He has his back turned to her, listening quietly to an exchange between two other ancient elves and a spirit. He has grown his hair out, and he wears the clothing of the ancients.

                She steps up behind him, clearing her throat and reaching out to touch his shoulder. She had only meant to catch his attention, to ask for directions. He turns, and she sees his face, and her heart nearly stops beating.

                She should hate him. She should be angry at him. She should kill him where he stands, to make up for all the lives that were lost.

                “Vala?” he asks, voice cracking. He looks at her like a man in the desert looks at a glass of water. He looks at her like he had thought he would never see her again, and like he thinks she might disappear at any moment. She wants to be angry.

                “Forgive me. I only meant to ask for directions,” she says, and her voice sounds distant. She feels distant, like she is not in her own body anymore, like she had felt when he had commanded her like a puppet on strings. She wants to hate him, but she can only think of how much death she has seen. Of all the people she has lost.

                She finds, suddenly and inexplicably, that she does not want to lose anyone else. Her anger is exhausting. If she tries to hold onto it, she thinks it might poison her. He has never looked so young. She has never felt so old.

                “How…have you been?” he asks, carefully. He watches her warily, like he expects her to kill him. She wonders if he would stop her.

                “I…have been learning to garden,” she says. It hurts, to talk like this. Like they are acquaintances. Like they are strangers. She realizes she never grieved him. Never grieved their relationship, and what they could have had.

                “Oh. What brings you to Arlathan?” he asks. There is that look in his eyes, again. It is guarded and hopeful, and she remembers it from lifetimes ago. From Haven. She wonders if there is anything left of the memorial the Inquisition had built. She wonders if there is anyone who still believes in Andraste and the Maker.

                “You promised, once, to show me everything in this new world of yours. Perhaps it is time to follow through,” she says, and there is the ghost of a smile on her face. He is not forgiven, not yet, but this is the only olive branch she could extend. Her heart has been battered and broken and shattered, but it still beats. She has spent the last two thousand years enduring.

                She thinks it is time to start living again.

* * *

                Solas gives her a tour of Arlathan. The air between them is different. She wonders if it is because they are different, or if it is because the world is different. She doesn’t let it bother her. Instead, she asks questions, and she can feel them slipping into something familiar.

                The new Arlathan is not quite the same as the old one. The new Arlathan is built firmly upon the ground. It does not rely on magic. If the Veil is ever raised again, it will not destroy this city as it had destroyed the others.

                It is built on the ruins of the old city, though. Vala wonders how the ruins of the old city had looked when they were found. She cannot find it in her to ask. She cannot think of ruins without thinking of a home that has been lost to her.

* * *

                She spends centuries in Arlathan. It is beautiful, if opulent. She thinks that maybe, if she waits long enough, she will feel a connection. The Dalish had dreamt of Arlathan, and here she is in it.

                The connection never comes.

                When she finally gives up, she lets Solas take her elsewhere.

* * *

                He has rebuilt the Vir Dirthara. The spirits are no longer fragmented, and the shelves are stocked with all the knowledge that he had been able to recover. She does not recognize it, and she is glad for it. This was the project he had devoted much of his time to. Arlathan had been easy to remake. The grand library had not. His dedication was obvious.

                A thousand years pass by before she knows it.

* * *

                They are not back to how they were before, but they are friends again. The world has already ended, and everyone else is already dead, so she does not see the point in hating him for the rest of her life. It will be a long one, and there are few things she has left in the world.

                He shows her every corner of his new empire. It is brilliant and resplendent, and she sees all the wonders he had spoken about before. She does not ask about the Evanuris, and he does not tell her.

                Instead, as they are staying in an opulent inn built in the Crossroads, she tells him that she misses the Dalish. She does not know if she is the last. But Arlathan and its glittering spires are so very different from the home she once had. Clan Lavellan had died at Wycome, and the other clans had died or scattered when the Veil fell.

                He leaves her a few days (or maybe it is weeks- she finds that time has a different scale for her now) later. It must have been the guilt that drove him away, and she finds herself wishing she had not spoken of the Dalish.

                She waits for him for a little longer, for word. Something might have pulled him away. She is not the only elf in his empire, of course. But no word comes, and so Vala does what she has always done from a very early age. She wanders.

* * *

                She finds her way back to Arlathan. There are more buildings and more people, and the city is a sprawling network. There has been much added in the time she has been away, but the city is still the same.

                She returns to the Vir Dirthara. Centuries pass there, and then she steels her heart and goes somewhere she had presumed lost.

                Vala Lavellan goes to Skyhold.

* * *

                The fortress is untouched. There has been some wear, from the fall of the Veil and from the elements, but the dwarves the Inquisition had hired had done their job well enough that the castle had not fallen into complete disrepair. The tavern had, but it was wooden and not stone, and she is not very surprised.

                Her banners still hang on the wall, tattered and dusty. Her throne, covered in a heavy layer of dust, sits where it has always sat. Her bedroom is untouched, too. The papers she had been looking at are still spread across her desk. She knows if she touches them, they will disintegrate, but she sits in her chair anyway and reads the words of the long dead.  She recognizes Josephine’s looping script, and Leliana’s neat writing. She catches sight of a scribbled note from Bull on the corner, and suddenly it is hard to breathe. She cannot bear to read the words he had written, knows it is something filthy he wanted to do to her.  

                She swallows around the lump in her throat, and looks down at her clasped hands in her lap. The tears come, finally, and she moves to the balcony. From here, she can pretend that it is the same Skyhold she left. This part of the mountains has remained largely unchanged by the fall of the Veil. She is home, but Skyhold is not a home when it is empty. She cries until she cannot cry anymore, and curls up to sleep against the railing.

* * *

                She wakes up instinctively. It is still dark, and the same starts shine in the night sky. She is not alone, but she is not scared.

                Solas steps into a shaft of moonlight, then. “I had not thought to find you here,” he says, softly, in the same tone of voice he had always used when he was trying to solve a puzzle.

                “I had to see it,” she says. She has still not seen all of it. She wonders if the equipment is still in the Underforge, wonders if anyone was left in the cells, wonders if any of the books have survived in the library that Dorian was so fond of.

                “I have something to show you. Something for you,” he says, and there is a burning intensity in his gaze. He looks younger than he ever did in her world. She is glad this new one suits one of them.

                She stands and stretches. She looks back over the balcony, at the tower that Cullen had stayed in, at the garden. If Skyhold had survived for four thousand years, it can survive for another four thousand. Staying here will not help her shake off the ghosts that cling to her.

                “Take me there,” she says, and he gives her a gallant smile as he takes her hand.

* * *

                He takes her to a forest. She doesn’t recognize it at first, and then she does. This is the forest she had spent much of her time in as a child. They are somewhere in what had been the Free Marches.

                “You wanted to show me a forest?” she asks, almost amused. He laughs, linking his fingers through hers. It is easy to be with him. She wonders why she had thought it wouldn’t be. He had not changed so much.

                “No, _vhenan_. There is something in the forest. It took me quite some time to get it right,” he tells her, and then he leads her forward with an impish smile. The forest presses in on them from all sides, and even though it is five thousand years later, it feels the same. It feels like home. She feels tears welling up in her eyes again, feels a lump in her throat.

                Solas takes her a camp full of aravels. It takes her mind a moment to process what she is seeing. There are half a dozen campfires in the center of the sprawling camp, and a pen full of halla at the edge. She does not bother to wipe her tears away.

                And then the people step out from behind the aravels. Revas comes first, and the others follow. The surviving members of the resistance, she remembers. Sera, surprisingly, is there among them. Two dozens elves, all of them remnants of her world. Words fail her completely.

                “You said you missed home, and this should not only be my world. You said you were the First of your Clan. I thought maybe it was time for you to be Keeper,” he says, and there is something so soft and gentle in his voice that she can almost forget he was the one who ended the world.

                Vala isn’t stupid. A dozen aravels and a handful of halla will not make up for the world he took from her. It will not bring back the lives lost. But it is a new start, a home where she can feel like she belongs.

                She turns to him to say something, to put to voice how much this means to her. She can’t speak around the lump in her throat, though. Then, hesitantly, warily, Solas cups her face with his hand and presses a kiss to her lips. She melts into him, and someone whistles from the crowd assembled. She thinks she hears Sera booing them.

                He pulls back, and she looks into his eyes. “ _Ar lath ma_ ,” he says, heartbreakingly gentle. His smile is warm and soft, and it reminds her of another place and another time.

                Vala’s world is gone. It has taken her almost five thousand years to accept it. There is nothing that will take away the ghosts in her head, the grief from her heart. But she can pull the shattered pieces of it back together, and she can find a place in this strange new world. She rests her forehead against his.

                “ _Ar lath ma_ ,” she tells him, and he kisses her again.

**Author's Note:**

> hey! thanks for reading! i hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, feel free to leave a comment letting me know. i do my best to respond to them all, but even if i don't, know that i adore them.


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